Max Rencoret

Engineers are experiencing a seismic shift driven by market volatility, the rise of GenAI, and new approaches to quantifying engineering impact. But there's a disconnect between business leaders and the engineers building their products. 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝘆 𝗯𝘆 Jellyfish 🔗 https://bit.ly/3Vt3lcO 📉 71% of execs at large enterprises believe productivity decreased, while only 40% of engineers agree. 🤷‍♂️ 43% of engineers feel that leadership at their company is out of the loop regarding engineering challenges, compared to 92% of executives 😩 46% of engineers report their teams are experiencing burnout, compared to 34% of executives. This chasm between perception and reality can breed mistrust, misalignment, and missed opportunities. 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹, 𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻: ✨ Foster psychological safety for open dialogue 🤝 Build trust through active listening and empathy 💡 Inspire teams by painting a compelling vision 🧭 Provide clarity amidst ambiguity and change By complementing hard metrics with soft skills, leaders can create an environment where engineers thrive and innovation flourishes. 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻? #Leadership #EmotionalIntelligence #Engineering

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Today Vladimir Oustinov and I are launching Railblocks 🚀 We partner with ambitious founders building ops-heavy businesses to help them design, build and grow their own internal Operating System. I’ve seen so many “best stack for X” lists go viral lately — and while I think this is important and I’m always for giving visibility to amazing tools, these lists can mislead founders into forgetting that picking the right tool is just the beginning. The real key is how you implement and stitch together the tools you pick: 1. how data flows in and out of each tool 2. how they fit into your processes 3. how you communicate about 1 & 2 with your team This is exactly what I have been doing for the last 8 years as an employee, and what we want to solve with Railblocks. We get things moving quickly: in just a few weeks we’ll have laid the foundations for your new stack, migrated all your existing data over, and trained your team to start using it. From there on out it’s all about documenting/training, monitoring and iterating. Over and over again. We're not a distant agency, we get our hands dirty and go deep into the weeds with your team, until your company feels like it’s on rails. We’ve been hard at work with our first clients (On Deck, Lighthouse HQ & Mercury) over the last 6mo to help them build automated and scalable workflows to: - attract & qualify leads - onboard & communicate with customers - attract & select talent - track & analyze KPIs Big thank you to Julian Weisser, Noémie Federico, Minn Kim, Alexis Wiseman, mallory contois for trusting Railblocks 💜 Amd shout out to all the great tools which have made this possible: Airtable, Zapier, Fillout, Attio, Glide, HubSpot, Hightouch, Customer.io, OpenAI...

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A good short practical list!

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Product for Engineers dropped another awesome post recently: How we decide what to build. It’s a beautiful building-in-public look at how PostHog goes about product development. There is so much to learn from this newsletter. I love it. https://lnkd.in/ewNBSpu4

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📰🚀 We're super excited to double-down on toddle in a $4.3 million Seed with our friends at PSV, Lifeline Ventures, and fantastic angles including Typeform co-founder David Okuniev. You can read a great overview in TechCrunch, but we love how this team isn't just creating a product, they're creating a new movement around how complex web apps are developed. As Inventure's Kevin Lösch put it, "The barriers to complex app creation are gone, and it empowers individuals, small groups, and large corporations to innovate and compete on a level playing field. It’s a democratization of innovation. It accelerates the pace of technology, unlocks new growth, and fundamentally reshapes who participates in the tech revolution, especially when selling work and not software." Toddle is the best way to bring something new into the world. Sign up today to see what you're missing: https://toddle.dev/

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I loved Hannah Clark and Daniel Danker 's recent podcast episode. The best piece of advice was on scaling product organizations. Daniel mentioned that when scaling, he avoids the trap of more of the same and instead figures out what they should be doing as he scales. To paraphrase, what are the 10X ideas that they should incorporate? Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/guYMfMm3

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Comprehensive #Seed VC Contact Database. Access a list of over 1,250 venture capital firms, 7,400+ VC professionals (including partners and principals), and 6,400 email addresses. https://payhip.com/b/cs7UQ #startup #startups #vc #venturecapital #investmentbanking #privateequity #managementconsulting #b2b #founders #entrepreneurs

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Robust #PreSeed VC Contact Compilation. Explore a database of 250+ VC firms and 1,000+ professionals (partners and principals), complete with 900 email addresses for outreach. https://payhip.com/b/1bm6W #startup #startups #vc #venturecapital #investmentbanking #privateequity #managementconsulting #b2b #founders #entrepreneurs

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I saw a rare example of bad advice from YC recently. They told folks that it doesn’t matter if you’re passionate about your company’s product / mission. While that’s fine from the #VC’s perspective, as lots of enterprise b2b applications are extremely profitable, which was their point. And their business is driven by repeatably successful actions. Growing a b2b business in their wheelhouse, with their network is definitely a successful and repeatable activity. However … most people should not even be an #Entrepreneur. Let alone a founder of a VC-backed startup. The lifestyle will make them miserable. To be a successful #founder, you need to be motivated to get up and work on your company 10+ hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s all-consuming. Usually for an entire decade. So focusing on a product and customers that you don’t care about … that will compuound the personal pain and build a personal hell. I’ve seen that happen to a number of my friends and associates over the years, even when they were seen as tremendous successes. Focus first on what matters the most … your happiness. That includes solving a problem that you’re excited about. But only if you’re actually an entrepreneur. Before you dive into being a business owner…figure out if that lifestyle is for you.

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Hot take: The most impactful systems builders rarely come from IT. They come from Sales, Ops, Customer Success—the people who live and breathe the problem they’re solving, who’ve been told “no” more times than they can count, and who can’t help but think about optimizing every process in sight. These are the builders who see the inefficiencies hiding in the day-to-day and chase solutions to make things truly better, faster, and smarter. They’re the ones I want to see at the center of the future we’re building, not sidelined. But here’s the key: both IT and these frontline builders have to buy into working together. And I’m hopeful that AI can finally bridge this gap, helping each side speak the other’s language with minimal effort. When AI accelerates what no-code was always meant to be but hasn’t fully delivered on yet, we unlock the real potential of collaboration—systems that don’t just work, but transform the way we work. Let’s get there.

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Experiencing the Unstoppable Energy of SF's Tech Ecosystem at #SFTechWeek! Wow, what an incredible time to be in the Bay Area! The velocity of innovation here is absolutely electrifying. I'm thrilled to share that I'm currently in San Francisco for Stackbooster's fundraising and to expand our customer base during this amazing #SFTechWeek. The ecosystem here is buzzing with ideas and opportunities. Every meeting and event has been a gateway to new possibilities. We've connected with some of the most visionary minds and forward-thinking investors—it's humbling to see the excitement around what we're building with Stackbooster. For those who might not know, Stackbooster is dedicated to helping startups save money, time, and resources. We're empowering our customers to launch faster and more efficiently while seamlessly adopting AWS solutions. The positive feedback and success stories from startups we've partnered with have been incredibly inspiring. If you're around and want to chat about accelerating growth, optimizing your tech stack, or just share insights about the vibrant SF tech scene, let's connect! This week has been a whirlwind of inspiration, and I can't wait to see what's next. Feeling grateful and energized by the amazing community here! #Stackbooster #StartupGrowth #Innovation #AWS #Entrepreneurship #TechEcosystem #SFTechWeek

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🎙️ Exciting insights from SaaS Academy's CEO Johnny Page on the Expertise Economy podcast! Johnny breaks down their two-step approach to helping SaaS founders: 1️⃣ The Discovery Call: Uncovering the founder's "why" and long-term vision 2️⃣ The Strategic Game Plan Session: Creating a 90-day action plan to achieve 12-month goals 🔑 Key focus: Identifying and solving business constraints Want to dive deeper on the secrets of building a successful SaaS business? Check out the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/dju-Be2u #SaaS #BusinessStrategy #SaasAcademy #ExpertiseEconomy #Podcast

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🚀 It’s a big day at Hoop! We’re excited to share we’ve raised $5m led by Index Ventures with participation from Origin Ventures, Chingona Ventures, Divergent Capital, and an inspiring group of angel investors. Two years ago, Justin, Brian, and I got together and started brainstorming. We had worked together as early executives at Trello for 7.5 years! We wanted to recreate the magic of the early days of Trello and respond to the epidemic of distraction we were seeing in the workplace. When I left Atlassian, I was in back-to-back meetings most days. Slack was constantly buzzing. My whole day was spent going between apps and praying I wouldn’t miss something important. I would wake up in the middle of the night remembering that DM I forgot to respond to. In an age of AI, this kind of mental fatigue across tools drains humans of our energy to do the work that really matters: the focused and creative work that comes when we can feel secure that we’re on top of all important work. Hoop is the product I wish I had. It connects to Zoom, Google Meet, Slack and email and automatically captures tasks for me using AI. It then centralizes everything in one spot so I never miss a task. Our vision is to rethink task management with an AI first principles mindset. There’s so much we can do now that we couldn’t have imagined back when we were building Trello. It’s an exciting time to be building in the space, and we’ve got a world class team taking on this challenge. Now’s the time to try Hoop out and let us know what you think! We couldn’t be more grateful for all the amazing support from our community, investors, and friends. Let’s go team! 👏🏼 Special thanks to our investors for all their belief and support - Damir Becirovic Neil Rimer Katie Shea Samara Mejia Hernandez Jason Heltzer Andy Dunn Wade Foster Linda Lian Michael Pryor Kristen Habacht Elizabeth Hall Barry Clark Nikita Miller Mihika Kapoor Jiaona Zhang (JZ) Maggie Adhami-Boynton Sonia Sahney Nagar Sean Harper Darren Murph Mike Arauz Job van der Voort Annie Duke Jay Simons Maria Christopoulos Katris Ezra Galston Sheel Mohnot Ilya Fushman #futureofwork #ai #startups #fundraising

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Is double digit growth a sign of true product-market fit? Jason M. Lemkin at SaaStr does an excellent job at emphasizing the importance of metrics such as customer retention, engagement, and adoption rates in determining product market fit. Additionally, it discusses the significance of customer feedback, market demand validation, and the ability to solve a pressing problem for target customers. By focusing on these key indicators, startups can better assess and refine their product-market fit strategies for sustainable growth and success.

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Why we're leaving 70% of potential revenue on the table. And why it might be the smartest business decision we've made. After our $130M exit with Olapic, we had a choice to make with Remotely. The traditional playbook was clear: - Optimize for maximum margins - Scale rapidly - Raise significant capital - Keep pricing opaque Instead, we chose a radically different path with Remotely. We did something "irrational": showed our customers exactly how much developers make. In an industry where companies typically pocket 70% of what customers pay, we decided to charge a transparent flat fee (that effectively makes our take rate at 18%). Everyone said we were crazy. "You're giving away margin!" But here's what happened: → Customers started referring us to other customers → The best developers chose us over higher-paying competitors → We grew entirely through word-of-mouth while others spent heavily on sales 4 years in: - 300+ developers placed - $37M paid directly to developers - $25M in annual GMV - Small, profitable team - Still charging a flat fee And we’re just getting started :) We’re publicly documenting our journey and sharing our metrics on our newsletter, you can subscribe here - https://hubs.ly/Q02-mH5S0

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🌱 Ready to take your startup to the next level? Access our extensive list of 950+ #SeedVC firms! Get all the essential details like stages, markets, and social media links. Your funding journey starts here! 🚀 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/dEnwYePU #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #managementconsulting

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